The Mismeasure of Man

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The Mismeasure of Man ( German  The Mismeasure of Man ) is a 1981 published book of paleontologists and Harvard -Professors Stephen Jay Gould . The work is a criticism of the general concept of intelligence and its application to different ethnicities , genders and population groups. With The Mismeasure of Man , Gould made a controversial and widely discussed contribution to the discussion of the concept of intelligence. In 1996 the book was published in a modified and expanded edition, this version contains a detailed criticism ofCharles Murrays and Richard Herrnstein's book The Bell Curve (1994). By 1996 The Mismeasure of Man had already been translated into ten languages ​​and sold 250,000 times.

overview

The Mismeasure of Man is directed against what Gould calls "biological determinism". Biological determinism "asserts that the shared norms of behavior and the social and economic differences between population groups - especially between races, classes and genders - result from inherited and innate characteristics and that social conditions are an accurate representation of biology."

With regard to the concept of intelligence, biological determinism shows itself in the assumption of a unified and innate cognitive capacity. Gould describes this conception in a study of the history of science , focusing on 19th century craniometry (skull measurement) and the history of the intelligence quotient . He tries to show that the measurement of a uniform capacity "intelligence" is fundamentally wrong. According to Gould, the term “intelligence” rather encompasses a partially arbitrary combination of cognitive abilities that also result from a complex interaction of social and biological factors.

With The Mismeasure of Man, Gould takes a position on the still very controversial debates about genetic and environmental influences on cognitive abilities and the correct conception of the concept of intelligence. The book was received in parts very positively by the public and experts, but also led to sharp criticism. In contemporary psychology, too, there are theories, particularly following Arthur Jensen , that assume an innate general intelligence. Proponents of these theories accused Gould of confusing serious empirical theories with flawed and racist theories of the history of biology . Gould, on the other hand, claims a continuity of the theoretical approaches and explains that current theories of innate, general intelligence made the same structural errors as the approaches of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The debate about The Mismeasure of Man can certainly be put in context with the controversies surrounding Gould's oeuvre. Gould is considered one of the central evolution theorists of the 20th century, but turned against what he believed to be a misguided biologism , which also seeks to replace or at least change sociology or psychology with biological explanations. In this sense, Gould is known as the most influential critic of sociobiology .

Skull measurements

Typical craniometric representation of the 19th century, in which an alleged similarity between monkeys and blacks is to be shown.

The first part of the book deals with craniometry , i.e. the theory and practice of skull measurements. Since in the 19th century intelligence was linked to brain volume and the brain volume can be deduced from skull measurements, numerous biologists tried to use craniometry to gain knowledge about the intelligence of people. The concern to prove the intellectual superiority of whites over blacks and of men over women played a special role. According to Gould, the historical study of these approaches reveals at least three errors that continue to affect current intelligence research. According to Gould, measurements were erroneous, arbitrary methods were used in data analysis, and the entire research program was based on a false theory about the relationship between brain volume and intelligence.

Morton and bad data

Samuel George Morton was one of the most influential North American scientists of the 19th century and known for his anatomical collection, which included over 600 skulls. In fact, Morton was pursuing a specific goal with the collection, which he explicitly describes in his Crana Americana : The "indigenous races" of North America have not made it to any civilization and are also unable to adopt the Anglo-Saxon culture. Further: “These phenomena must have a cause. Could there be a more interesting and philosophical investigation than linking the cause to the differences in the brains of the indigenous American races and the conquering invaders. ”Morton used his skull collection to test this hypothesis: by filling the skulls with materials like mustard seeds , he measured the volume of the cavity and thus concluded the size of the brain. He had a clear idea of ​​how the results should turn out: Whites should have the largest brains and blacks the smallest. A native American race should be in between. Indeed, Morton's data seemed to support these theses (see table).

Alleged relationship between race and skull capacity (in cubic inches) according to Morton, cited from Gould 1996
race Number of skulls Average capacity Highest capacity Lowest capacity
Caucasian
(Europe) 		52 87 109 75
Mongolian
(Asia) 		10 83 93 69
Malay (Oceania) 18th 81 89 64
Americans (America, indigenous people) 144 82 100 60
Ethiopians (Africa) 29 78 94 65

Gould repeated Morton's measurements on the old skulls using Morton's own methods and first reported in 1978 in the journal Science that Morton's numbers were incorrect. Gould later summarized his findings as follows: “My correction to Morton's ranking shows no significant difference between races. All groups are between 83 and 87 cubic inches and the Caucasians share the top. ”So, according to Gould, Morton had measured the results in a way that matched his prejudices. Nevertheless, Gould explains that a deliberate forgery cannot be assumed. Rather, one must assume that Morton was unconsciously guided by his prejudices. In the case of Europeans, for example, he simply took better care that the skulls were actually completely filled with the material. According to Gould, this shows the fundamental problem that even with apparently objective empirical measurements, prejudices can influence the result.

In 2011, however, a research team led by Jason E. Lewis ( Stanford University ) reported that a re-measurement of around half of the skulls in Morton's collection showed that his measurements and the data reported in his publications were essentially correct. At the same time, Gould was now accused of having only re-measured selected skulls and of having interpreted Morton's work with prejudice.

Broca and flawed methods

Paul Broca

However, according to Gould, incorrect measurements were not the only mistake in 19th century craniometry. The example of the famous French anthropologist and neuropsychologist Paul Broca also shows that the skull measurements were guided by a one-sided and incorrect method . Broca also assumed that there are different human races that have brains of different sizes and are therefore of different intelligence. According to Broca, the whites should also be at the top and the blacks at the bottom of this brain-intelligence scale: “In general, the brain is larger in adults than in the elderly, in men larger than in women and in higher races larger than in inferior races. "" If all other conditions are the same, there is a remarkable connection between the development of intelligence and the volume of the brain. "

As the undisputed specialist in neuroscientific questions, Broca immediately set about proving these claims empirically. But soon problems arose in numerous places that almost led Broca to abandon his theory. According to Louis Pierre Gratiolet, the Germans had on average a larger brain than the French. For the nationally-minded French scientist Broca, this was a completely unacceptable result. It was also shown that the brains of great scientists were by no means always particularly large, while the brains of criminals turned out to be not particularly small. Broca was looking for ways to explain away all of this inappropriate data. With regard to Germans, for example, he explained that the French are on average older than Germans and that the brain shrinks with age. In addition, the Germans are a little taller and the brain volume varies with body size. After all, the brains of people who died unnaturally are not representative, which is why he removed all Germans from the data who had died as a result of execution or accidents. After Broca calculated all these effects out, the French had a bigger brain again than the Germans. Such conversions also made it possible to adjust the results of the small brains of great scientists: the scientists were often very old or small, or the brains were poorly preserved. In the case of the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß , who also only had a medium-sized brain, it was argued that the brain had a particularly large number of turns for this. If none of this worked, it could still be argued that not all parts of the brain are equally important. "Broca often used the distinction between front and back brain, especially to get himself out of the awkward situations his data got him into."

So Broca had found methods to explain away undesirable dates. However, if he liked the data, he didn't consistently ask whether they could be put into perspective in the same way. Gould therefore explains that Broca's method “led to the fact that data could never disprove his assumptions.” The error of the prejudiced research method according to Gould is not a purely historical phenomenon. Even with today's intelligence theories, unpleasant data can be explained away with reference to test design, test situation, selection of test subjects, etc., while the data that match one's own prejudice is not questioned accordingly.

The illusion of brain size

Finally, Gould points out that 19th century craniometry was based on the false theory that there was a relationship between brain size and intelligence. Even if brains of different sizes can be identified in different ethnic groups, this does not say anything about the cognitive abilities of the respective groups. Modern psychological and neuroscientific approaches reject such a connection. Cognitive performance such as thinking , memory or problem solving are linked to very complex activity patterns in the brain and cannot be traced back to rough neuroanatomical structures.

One can show with simple examples that there is no general connection between brain size and intelligence. On the one hand, humans by no means have the largest brains; the brain of an elephant, for example, is much larger than that of humans. Even when comparing humans, one cannot infer intelligence from the brain volume. It has not only been found that outstanding scientists like Gauss do not have to have an above-average brain, the size of the brain also depends significantly on body size, without being able to deduce intelligence from body size. After all, there is a difference in the average brain volume of women and men without any associated intelligence difference.

Mental age and innate intelligence

Alfred Binet

The pedagogue and psychologist Alfred Binet is considered the founder of modern intelligence test procedures . His new method was also based on the increasing dissatisfaction with the craniometric procedure. Instead of the old medical procedure, the mental capacity of people should now be examined directly in a psychological procedure. Depending on their performance in the psychological tests, the test subjects were assigned a mental age , and the mental age was later converted into the first intelligence quotient by William Stern . The methods had changed, yet, according to Gould, the goals of the research community remained essentially the same. With the help of the new psychological methods it should again be proven that there is an innate intelligence that belongs to whites more than blacks, men more than women and the educated upper class more than the working class.

The intelligence tests of the US Army during the First World War, in which 1.75 million recruits were tested and thus an enormous amount of data was created, played a special role in the implementation of intelligence tests and the aforementioned prejudices. Robert Yerkes , who analyzed the data from the test, came to the following results: 1) The mental age of the average white, adult American is only 13 years and not, as previously assumed, 16. 2) The intelligence of European immigrants can after the Countries of origin are sorted. While immigrants from northern European countries have an especially high mental age on average, the intelligence of southern European and Slavic immigrants is particularly low. The average mental age of the Italian is 11.01 years, that of the Pole is only 10.74. 3) Blacks would be at the end of the average mental age scale at 10.41 years.

These results, presented by Yerkes, confirmed many of the prejudices of the research community, but were in part new. In particular, the low mental age of the average white American shocked parts of the professional world and had a major impact on the eugenics and immigration debates in the United States. Commentators feared that the influx of less intelligent immigrants and the intermingling of the various population groups would further reduce the intelligence of the average American, which in turn could result in America's decline. The importance these thoughts had in the public eye, according to Gould, can be seen in the influence the Army Test had on the immigration debates of the 1920s that eventually led to the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 . The army test was able to be particularly influential because for the first time there seemed to be reliable empirical facts about an innate intelligence that were obtained from a large amount of data.

Criticism of the army test

However, according to Gould, the army test did not imply the results reported by Yerkes, but was based on fundamental errors typical of theories of innate intelligence. One can distinguish between two types of criticism: On the one hand, Gould argues that the data collection was fundamentally unsuitable for measuring innate intelligence; on the other hand, the data obtained were incorrectly interpreted. When collecting data, the first thing that catches the eye is the test construction, in which numerous questions asked about general education rather than innate intelligence . An obvious example of this is the following question:

  • Christy Mathewson is a famous writer, artist, baseball player or comedian? (He was an American baseball player.)

But even if one had eliminated such questions, the Gould test would not measure innate intelligence, for which the test conditions were responsible in particular. Many of the immigrants did not speak English and had no schooling. Gould comments: “In summary, many recruits could not see or hear the tester, some had never taken a test before or even held a pen in their hand. Many did not understand the instructions and were completely confused. ”The high number of zeros in the rating scale of the individual tests speaks in favor of Gould's interpretation. In a sub-test with a scale of 0-40, 40% of the test subjects achieved 0 points, in many other sub-tests the proportion of zeros was similar. This distribution of points suggests that a large proportion of those tested simply did not understand the instructions. According to Gould, such errors led to the fact that the data said very little about intelligence and, in particular, the test could not measure innate intelligence (regardless of education, upbringing, life situation, etc.).

Gould then also argued that the data ultimately only allow an interpretation that accepts a strong influence of environmental factors: “Yerkes' monograph is a treasure trove of information for anyone who wants to correlate environmental factors and measured intelligence. Since Yerkes rejected a substantial, causal role of environmental influences, this claim may seem paradoxical. ”Blacks in the northern states did, on average, significantly better than blacks in the southern states. In the four northernmost states, blacks did even better than whites in the nine southern states. Another example of the obviousness of environmental influences was the clear increase in mental age with the length of stay in the USA (see table). The more familiar people were with US culture and language, the better they did on the intelligence tests. In the following, Gould argues that such environmental influences by no means only come into play because of a poor test design. Rather, cognitive performance results from such a complex interaction of innate and social factors that even modern tests are not able to measure purely innate intelligence.

Relationship between length of stay in the USA and mental age
Years of residence Average mental age
0-5 11.29
6-10 11.70
11-15 12.53
16-20 13.50
20– 13.74

Critique of General Intelligence

It is not only the idea of ​​innate intelligence that Gould locates and criticizes historically. Another goal of Gould is theories of general intelligence. Gould counters such approaches that people have very different cognitive abilities and these are very different in people. It therefore makes no sense to combine them into a general intelligence (usually simply called g ). Rather, one should rely on a theory of multiple intelligences as advocated in recent years by Howard Gardner in particular . Despite the obvious diversity of cognitive abilities, the idea of ​​general intelligence plays a large role in the history of science and in parts of modern cognitive science . It is essentially justified by correlations between cognitive abilities and the statistical method of factor analysis . The basic observation of general intelligence theory advocates is that individuals who do well on one type of test tend to do well on other types of tests as well. The test results are therefore “positively correlated” in technical terms.

The factor analysis in psychology, developed in particular by Charles Spearman and Cyril Burt , tries to mathematically grasp these correlations better and thus to develop a theory of general intelligence. Spearman used factor analysis for the first time to reduce different, positively correlated variables to a common factor g (general intelligence). If a person has similar results on a variety of tests, the different tests can be used to calculate a general trend. According to Gould, there is nothing wrong with this mathematical procedure. However, it had been associated with a fatal error from the very beginning: “In 1904 Spearman calculated such a component and then made a mistake that has plagued factor analysis ever since. He reified them into an entity and tried to give a clear causal interpretation. He called it g, or general intelligence, and believed that he had found a uniform quality that underlies all cognitive, mental activity; a quality that can be expressed as a single number and used to judge people on a uniform scale according to intellectual worth. "

However, such a reification is fundamentally wrong, since the factor analysis is just a mathematical procedure in which numerous variables are reduced to a single factor in a simplified manner. This becomes particularly clear if one takes into account that the factor analysis also allows other mathematical reconstructions in which the variables are reduced to several factors rather than one. This was already noted by Louis Leon Thurstone , who wanted to replace the theory of general intelligence with an early form of the theory of multiple intelligences . Thurstone noticed that the g factor varied depending on which test battery was used. The result could be different in a test with more spatial tasks than in a test with more mathematical tasks. He commented: “Such a factor [meaning g ] can be found for any set of positively correlated tests. It means no more or less than the average of the skills tested by the entire test battery. Hence, it varies from one battery to another and has no meaning beyond the arbitrary collection of tests that anyone can put together. [...] We cannot be interested in a general factor that is simply the average of a random collection of tests. "

If people can have particular strengths or weaknesses, for example in mathematics, in spatial, associative memory or in the speed of perception, then one should rather calculate the factors for these individual abilities and dispense with a general factor. This gave birth to the theory of multiple intelligences, which Gould also favored. However, according to Gould one must note that these individual intelligences are only abstractions and do not correspond to a thing in the mind or brain. In contrast to Thurstone, he explains that the intellectual abilities of people can always be classified in different ways and the assumption of individual intelligences is therefore only a theoretical aid.

The Bell Curve

The Mismeasure of Man was conceived by Gould as a work on the history of science that critically presents the theories of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Gould largely ignored the contemporary debate, but left no doubt that he believed that current theories of innate, general intelligence also make the mistakes described in the book. In the expanded edition of 1996, the presentation changed because Gould wrote an introduction to the current debate and in an appendix criticized Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's book The Bell Curve . The occasion for these additions was a bitter public and scientific controversy over the publication of Murray and Herrnstein, who represented exactly the theses that were attacked in The Mismeasure of Man . With that in mind, Gould explains, “ The Bell Curve is nothing new. This 800-page manifesto is nothing more than a long execution of the strong version of Spearman's g - the theory of a unified, genetically based, immutable thing in the head that can be ranked. "

According to Gould, Murray and Herrnstein's argument is based on four premises, all of which are doubtful: 1) The variety of cognitive abilities can be summarized in a single, comprehensive factor g . 2) One must be able to express the “amount of intelligence” in a single number. 3) That single number must describe an innate quality. 4) This innate quality must be stable and not significantly changeable through social and educational help. “In other words [...] human intelligence must be abstractable, ranked, largely innate and ultimately hardly changeable. If one of these assumptions is wrong, the whole argument and the associated political agenda collapses. ”For example, it is true that African Americans do a little worse on IQ tests than American whites. However, in view of the different social positions and educational opportunities, this in no way shows that whites have a greater innate intelligence. Ultimately, Murray and Herrnstein would bring no evidence for the assumptions 1-4 and therefore only articulate their racist and right-wing conservative prejudices. Murray accuses Gould, however, of misrepresenting the theses of The Bell Curve .

reception

In 1982, Franz Samelson published a book review in the journal Science in which he attested that Gould had written an extremely readable book that contained some fascinating details. Samelson points out that the measurement of intellectual abilities is widespread in today's professional life and that the debate about such tests, in particular their social impact, legal aspects and possible support measures, is therefore highly relevant. However, he takes the view that Gould's historical account is largely limited to known facts and makes little contribution to the discussion of practically relevant questions.

Steve Blinkhorn published a far more critical review in the same year in the journal Nature . He describes the work in it as a "masterpiece of propaganda", which reproduces the facts in a distorted manner. Gould's discussion of intelligence theory ignored the previous 25 years. Gould contributed nothing correct on relevant and methodological points. Steven Pinker expressed himself similarly in an interview: Gould's arguments were already perceived by intelligence researchers at the time of publication as severely flawed or dishonest and today they have largely fallen into disrepute.

The reception of The Mismeasure of Man by the wider public was strongly influenced by the discussion of the theses of the psychologist Arthur Jensen , who wrote in his 1969 article How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? had taken the controversial point of view that the difference in the mean intelligence quotient of blacks and whites observed in standard tests was largely genetic. In his review in the New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt praised the fact that Gould's book provided convincing arguments against Jensen's theses.

Shortly before the publication of The Mismeasure of Man , on the occasion of a criticism that Gould had published in the New York Review of Books of a book by Jensen, there had been an exchange of blows with the psychologist Hans J. Eysenck . Among other things, Eysenck accused Gould of doing propaganda, of his interpretations being unscientific and prejudiced, and of not being an expert. In the introduction to his book Intelligence: A New Look , Eysenck cites Gould, referring to The Mismeasure of Man, as an example of those “politically motivated scientists who are constantly misleading the public about what psychologists are doing and what in the field of intelligence research they have found out and what conclusions they have come to. ”He accuses Gould of deliberately suppressing facts and scientific knowledge which he does not seem to be compatible with his idea of political correctness .

Arthur Jensen himself criticized Gould's book in an article in Contemporary Education Review . The general intelligence factor g can also be understood as a theoretical construct and does not have to be reified in an implausible way. Overall, Gould's work is based on an unfair and simplistic transfer of examples from the history of science to current science. The current theory of a general, innate intelligence is neither methodologically dubious nor racially motivated. Rather, it is the best theory with the currently available data.

Despite the very mixed reactions, The Mismeasure of Man received several awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

literature

  • Stephen Jay Gould: The Mismeasure of Man . Norton, New York 1996, ISBN 0-393-03972-2 .
    • German translation of the 1981 edition: Stephen Jay Gould: The wrongly measured man . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1983, ISBN 3-518-28183-6 .
  • John B. Carroll : Reflections on Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (1981). A retrospective review . In: Intelligence . 1995, p. 121-134 ( psych.utoronto.ca - critical examination of the book).
  • JP Rushton: Race, intelligence, and the brain: The errors and omissions of the “revised” edition of SJ Gould's The mismeasure of man . In: Personality and Individual Differences , 23, 1996, pp. 169-180.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles Murray: The Bell Curve . Free Pres, New York 1994, ISBN 0-02-914673-9 .
  2. ^ Gould, 1996, p. 52.
  3. ↑ Nott and Gliddon: Types of Mankind , 1854
  4. ^ Samuel George Morton: Crania Americana , 1839, p. 352.
  5. ^ Gould, 1996, p. 86.
  6. ↑ Stephen Jay Gould: Morton's ranking of races by cranial capacity. Unconscious manipulation of data may be a scientific norm. In: Science , Volume 200, No. 4341, 1978, pp. 503-509, doi: 10.1126 / science.347573
  7. ↑ Gould, 1996, p. 99.
  8. ↑ Jason E. Lewis et al .: The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias. In: PLoS Biol 9 (6), p. E1001071, doi: 10.1371 / journal.pbio.1001071
  9. ↑ David degusta, Jason E. Lewis: Taking the measure of Gould's skulls. In: New Scientist , Volume 211, No. 2822, 2011. pp. 24-25, published online under the title Gould's skulls: Is bias inevitable in science?
  10. ↑ Paul Broca: Sur le volume et la forme du cerveau suivant les individus et suivant les races. In: Bulletin Societé d'Anthropologie Paris , 1861, p. 304.
  11. ↑ Paul Broca: Sur le volume et la forme du cerveau suivant les individus et suivant les races. In: Bulletin Societé d'Anthropologie Paris , 1861, p. 188.
  12. ↑ Gould 1996, p. 119.
  13. ^ Gould, 1996, p. 129.
  14. ↑ Gould 1996, p. 121.
  15. ^ Robert Yerkes: Psychological Examination in the United States Army . In: Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences , 1921
  16. ↑ Gould 1996, pp. 261f
  17. ^ Gould, 1996, p. 251.
  18. ↑ Gould 1996, p. 281.
  19. ^ Louis Leon Thurstone: Current Issus in Factor Analyzes . In: Psychological Bulletin , 1940.
  20. ^ Gould, 1996, p. 35.
  21. ^ Gould, 1996, p. 385.
  22. ↑ Interview with Murray. ( Memento of October 13, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) In: Skeptic , 1993
  23. ^ Franz Samelson: Intelligence and Some of Its Testers. ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) In: Science , 215, Feb. 5, pp. 656-657. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sciencemag.org
  24. ↑ Steve Blinkhorn: What skulduggery? In: Nature, Vol. 296, April 8, 1982, p. 506.
  25. ↑ Smart Bombs: Mark Dery, Steven Pinker on the Nature-Nurture Wars and the Politics of IQ. Interview with Steven Pinker. August 14, 2009.
  26. ↑ Christopher Lehmann-Haupt: The Mismeasure of Man. By Stephen Jay Gould. In: New York Times , October 21, 1981. Retrieved February 20, 2011.
  27. ↑ “ Dr. Gould prefers his own untutored and prejudiced interpretation to those of the experts ”. Nathan P. Glazer, Hans J. Eysenck, and Stephen J. Gould answer: Jensen and Bias: An Exchange . Letter in: The New York Review of Books . October 23, 1980.
  28. ↑ Hans J. Eysenck, and Stephen J. Gould's answer: What is Intelligence? Letter in The New York Review of Books , December 18, 1980
  29. ^ Hans Eysenck: Intelligence: A New Look . In: Transaction Publishers, 2000, p. 3.
  30. ^ Arthur Jensen: The Debunking of Scientific Fossils and Straw Persons . In: Contemporary Education Review . 1982
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 5, 2007 .